As we come to this point of rest on the synodal journey, we go to the mountains. The first is Mount Nebo where, after the flight from Egypt and the wandering in the wilderness, we find Moses finally glimpsing the Promised Land across the Dead Sea. Gazing upon the Land he will never enter, he addresses the people who will cross the River Jordan without him. He offers them a glimpse of a future where all will be well if they listen to the voice of the God who has led them this far, the God whose ways are strange but utterly trustworthy, the God who may seem at times to betray but never does in fact. All will go badly, however, if they listen to other voices, especially the siren song of the false gods whose words are never trustworthy and are always a betrayal.
We hear the voice of Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy, but it is to the voice of God they must listen, not just the voice of the mediator. Moses can urge this because he himself has learned, uniquely, to listen to the voice of God – and this from the moment of the encounter at the Burning Bush (Exod 3:1-6). In the Book of Exodus we are told that “the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (33:11). Moses, it seems, not only heard God but saw God, though elsewhere we’re told that he could see only God’s back because to see God’s face would mean death (Exod 33:23). Moses’ experience of God was an interplay of seeing and unseeing, light and darkness, knowing and unknowing – as it is for us. Earlier in Exodus, we’re told that he ascends Mount Sinai with Aaron, Aaron’s two eldest sons and seventy elders, and they see God beneath whose feet there is a pavement of sapphire “as clear as the heavens” (24:10-11). It’s as if, having climbed the mountain, they look into the blue heavens and, as if through sapphire, they see not the face but the feet of God, beneath whose gaze they eat and drink to seal the covenant.
“The word is very near you”, says Moses; and this is said by one who had spoken with God “face to face, as a man speaks with his friend”. Moses can speak to the people as he does because he has spoken with God as he did. He can speak as he does because he has listened. He has listened with befriending ears to the voice of the strangely befriending God. The intimacy is what counts.
From Mount Nebo, we rise on to the second mountain. This time it is Mount Tabor, the mount of the Transfiguration, where we find not Moses and his companions but Jesus and his disciples, Peter, James and John, the core-group of the Twelve. Moses glimpses the Promised Land, but the disciples glimpse the Risen Lord.
They see him with Moses to whom “the Lord spoke face to face” and Elijah who in his cave on Mount Horeb heard “the voice of a thin silence” and knew it was the voice of God (1 Kings 19:12). Moses through whom the law came and Elijah through whom the word came could speak with Jesus because they knew what it was to speak with God.
The voice from heaven urges the disciples to “listen to him, the Beloved Son” (Mark 9:7), because unless they do they will never come to know what rising from the dead might mean. Like the people on Mount Nebo, the disciples’ future depends on listening to the voice of God speaking now through Jesus. It will depend upon the obedience which is the sign of true listening. They are told to tell no-one of what they have seen until Jesus rises from the dead, because until then they will not understand what rising from the dead might mean; and if they don’t understand that, what they say will surely be wrong.
This moment on the mountain was a moment the disciples never forgot. Peter says in his Second Letter: “We were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honour and glory from God the Father and the voice was borne to him by the majestic glory, ‘This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased’, we ourselves heard this voice from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain” (1:16-18). They never forgot that moment and spent the rest of their life unpacking the meaning of what they had seen and heard.
From Tabor we move to a third mountain: this time it is Beehive Hill. Gathering on this Hill as we have through the Synod, we have glimpsed God, no more than that perhaps and even from beneath through shining sapphire. We have listened to a voice not our own, a voice from heaven, and we have recognised the voice of God who never ceases to speak through Jesus. Now we sit down with God to eat the Body and drink the Blood in order to seal the covenant, as did Moses and his companions on Sinai.
Like Moses and the people on Nebo and like the disciples on Tabor, we also glimpse the future, knowing that the synodal journey is far from over. In some ways it has only just begun. We ask what the Church in this part of the world will look like fifty years from now. We know it will look very different, but more than that we cannot say. Yet what we do know is that for us, as for the people on Nebo and the disciples on Tabor, the future will depend upon whether or not we listen to the voice of God and act upon what we hear. A failure to listen to the voice from heaven will mean that we hear no voice but our own; and that’s a recipe for disaster, as Moses makes clear. It condemns us to a dark echo-chamber which becomes a tomb. It’s the way of death.
So from Nebo to Tabor to Beehive Hill we fly, knowing that other mountain tops await us, even and especially the dark mountain of Calvary. Yet there is more to the journey than the mountain tops. Certainly there were for the people once they crossed the Jordan and entered the Promised Land; and the disciples had a very long way to go beyond the unforgettable moment on Tabor. There were times of misunderstanding and betrayal; grace was at hand at every turn, but so too was sin.
That will be the story of the journey into the future that lies before us. We have come a long way on this synodal path which takes its place within the larger journeys of the Plenary Council and the global Synod on Synodality; but we have a long way to go. We are learning to listen in new ways, so that we can see in new ways and learn in ways both old and new what it means to be the Church.
As we go down from the mountain, we will not forget the grace of this moment, what we have heard and seen. “Something which has existed from the beginning, that we have heard and we have seen with our eyes” (1 John 1:1): these are the opening words of the First Letter of John, and they go to the heart of this transfiguring moment of the Synod. Climbing the mountain has been hard, the descent will not be easy, and the journey ahead will have challenges both foreseeable and unforeseeable. But Nebo and Tabor and Beehive Hill, even Sinai and Calvary, converge in the voice we have heard and the vision we have glimpsed in these days. That voice and that vision will lead us through whatever darkness lies ahead into the morning light of Easter, into the Promised Land where we will see fulfilled God’s promise to make all things new (cf Rev 21:5). Amen.